


Tales of Atlantis: Ancient Rituals

by KD writes (KDHeart), xyzmary2001



Series: Tales of Atlantis [11]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Accidental Marriage, Accidental Voyeurism, Attempted Sexual Assault, Dubious Consent, Dubious Ethics, Ethical Dilemmas, F/M, Jealousy, Resolved Sexual Tension, Suicidal Ideation, This story goes places, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Withdrawal, and smutty, most of them are dark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-18 07:48:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29240115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KDHeart/pseuds/KD%20writes, https://archiveofourown.org/users/xyzmary2001/pseuds/xyzmary2001
Summary: They had no idea what they were getting themselves into.
Relationships: John Sheppard/Original Female Character(s), Rodney McKay/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Tales of Atlantis [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/105398
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Long time, no fic. Sorry. 2020 happened....  
> A brief warning at the beginning of this one. Things get a bit... dark... but not as dark and dubious as the tags might suggest. Still, if it's something you're uncomfortable with, you might want to sit this one out.

“How long do you think this will last?” Elizabeth asked for the third time that morning.

Catherine had joined Elizabeth and Rodney on the Infirmary’s observation deck to update them on John’s condition.

They had been back in Atlantis for three days now, but there were no signs of improvement. If anything, John seemed to be getting worse. He was currently strapped to his bed and violently struggling against his restraints. His cries - frustration, pain and anger - were muffled by the thick glass of the observation deck and she was grateful they didn’t have to witness his struggle in full.

Catherine heaved a sigh. She was exhausted. Most of the past four days were spent either in the Lab or at his side, trying to ease his pain and find a way to flush the enzyme out of his systems faster.

“I have no idea.” It hurt to admit, but she hadn’t made any progress and the information they had so far didn’t cover this situation.

“The Genii got over his stint with the Wraith a lot faster,” Rodney objected.

“Yes, but he hadn’t been recently subjected to a conversion process. His body has been flooded with so much enzyme, it’s a wonder he still has it in him to put up a fight.” The fact that she had shot him didn’t help, either. But she didn’t have a choice. The alternative was to leave him behind and that was no kind of choice.

“Can we go see him?” Rodney asked.

“I wouldn’t advise it,” Catherine said. “His grasp on reality is thin at best and can’t tell friend from foe right now. You’ll only aggravate him.”

Rodney pinned her with his stare. “But he lets you get close.”

“Actually, he doesn’t. What do you think the restraints are for?”

She could feel her frustration rising and Rodney didn’t really deserve the blame for it. It had been a very long week and it was far from being over. Before she could snap, she turned away and left the two alone.

It was time to check on John again, anyway.

o0o0o

By the time she entered the isolation room, Rodney and Elizabeth had gone. She couldn’t blame them - she wouldn’t be there either, if she could help it. She clung to her professionalism as hard as she could, because seeing John in that state hurt to the depths of her soul.

He stopped struggling as the door closed behind her, his attention turning towards the sound. He fixed her with wild eyes, red rimmed with exhaustion and fury.

“Are you here to kill me?” he asked and his voice sounded almost hopeful.

Catherine’s heart sunk. It wasn’t the first time she heard it, but every time was worse.

“No.” She tried to sound calm and reassuring in just one monosyllable.

She put her kit down on the table and started unpacking the vials and syringes. She had to bring everything in each time, because they couldn’t risk him breaking out of his bonds and getting his hands on anything sharp.

His struggles became more frantic again, but instead of the muted shouts they had seen from above, they were accompanied by more pleading. He wanted to die. She couldn’t accept that.

With a steady hand, she prepared the shot, focusing on the mechanical aspect of her preparation. If she spared him any more thought, she would dissolve into crying on the floor at his side. And there was enough time to do that once she got to her room, whenever that might be.

“I need you to stay still,” she instructed, turning to him. “This will help you relax.”

John snarled. The cuffs held him back from physically assaulting her, but the madness in his eyes burned her like an actual flame.

“You’re only making things worse on yourself,” she explained. She hated seeing him like this. He was so helpless under all that fury, like a trapped animal.

She could have had someone else handle him, but that felt too much like she was abandoning him.

His shoulder was bleeding - he had broken a few stitches again in his struggle. She was going to have to sew those back once he was knocked out. Her eyes lingered on the bare, bloody shoulder and drifted lower on his naked torso.

The brief distraction was enough to give him the chance to grab her hand.

Startled, she pulled back, but instantly gave in to his resistance. There was no point. It would only hurt both of them.

The door slid open behind her and one of the guards looked in.

“Do you need assistance?” one of them asked.

Catherine took a deep breath and fixed John with her stare.

“I’m good, thank you,” she said evenly.

Her heart was hammering, but she was not afraid. Not of John. No need to escalate things.

The door slid closed and they were alone once more.

His grip on her hand tightened. He was almost crushing it, but Catherine didn’t even blink.

“Kill me!” John’s voice broke on the last word. “Please, Catherine!”

“I can’t do anything if you hold me like this,” she said reasonably. There was no need to aggravate him.

He didn’t even seem to realize he was holding her anymore, his eyes drifting in surprise to their hands.

“If you cared about me, you would end this!” he hissed.

She could, but that had nothing to do with caring and everything to do with losing hope. If she thought there was no chance of getting him through this, would she give in to his pleas?

She was not giving up hope. Madness lay at the end of that path.

“We’ll talk about my feelings when you get better,” she assured him. “Because you will get better, I promise.”

His hand fell slack and she was able to pull away.

“Catherine,” he rasped.

“We’ll talk later, John.”

She jabbed the needle into his arm before he could gather any of his wits, and pressed the plunger.

The fire in his eyes turned slowly to confusion and his struggle subsided.

“We’ll have time,” she said, carding his hair with her fingers. It was a mess, but a charming mess, even in this state. “I promise you, we’ll have time. I’ll make sure of that.”

Before he drifted off to sleep, she gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile.

A few more minutes and he was finally sound asleep.

She let herself drop into a chair and held her head in her hands. She wasn’t helping him recover faster by sedating him, but letting him suffer though the withdrawal was cruel and unnecessary. She couldn’t bear to see him like that.

She just hoped he was strong enough to pull through. The alternative was unbearable.

o0o0o

The feel of water on his skin felt glorious after so long stuck on that hospital bed.

He had been told it was two weeks, but he had been in and out of consciousness so many times, he couldn’t tell if it was days or months, really. Just him, that cursed bed and the restraints keeping him there. And the need burning in his veins, calling for the Wraith enzyme that would make him whole and would make the pain go away.

He scrubbed furiously at his hair, the shampoo doing nothing to remove the sticky feeling of sweat and sebum gathered there over the days.

He had been so close to becoming a fucking Wraith worshipper. The pain in his shoulder was a sharp reminder of that. He had lost control and Catherine had shot him. He never thought she had it in her, though it didn’t surprise him, looking back on things. She had always been a bit trigger-happy, if given enough provocation. Only this time, she had an actual trigger to pull.

He rinsed his hair and applied more shampoo.

At least the Wraith Queen wasn’t a problem anymore. The bitch was dead, and by his hand. It was a small satisfaction in all the bullshit that was his life.

He still craved it, the enzyme, but the need was manageable now and he didn’t want to alarm his friends. He could handle the withdrawal.

It was the memories that were worse.

He stood under the spray, letting the water clear the lather from his hair.

His shoulder ached in a very satisfying way. It was a reminder that he was alive and not under the control of the Wraith.

The pinprick aches in his arm were a different reminder. They were a very vivid mark of the two weeks he had spent bedridden, but they were also the mark of Catherine’s refusal to let him ride out his pain on his own. She had stood by his side the entire time, as far as he could tell. Every time he was aware enough of his surroundings, she always seemed to be there.

She was a bit too kind hearted, he thought, rubbing soap over his tender arm. Letting him go cold turkey would have saved everyone a lot of time.

There was a weird sort of ache in his limbs, now that he had the chance to move around. The inactivity and nervous tension did as much harm to his body as the restraints and the sedatives he had been pumped with while his body was fighting against the enzyme. He wanted to dig his finger into his skin and get at the fanthom itch crawling under it.

He had craved death. Had asked for it. Begged. And Catherine had shut him down every single time.

She had shown nothing but calm and reassurance at his side, steady and comforting. But there had also been the looks she gave him when she thought he was sleeping, just before the drugs kicked in. She was frantic and worried. Even if he had been completely unaware of her feelings before, he knew for certain now.

He didn’t know how that made him feel anymore…

Oh, he was aware of _his_ feelings for her, even through the haze of the past few weeks. He just didn’t like them. She was an attractive, spirited woman, that was entirely wrong for him. One-sided attraction wasn’t that big of a problem. It came with the territory - working and living so closely with other people usually led to that.

But she was Rodney's girlfriend, for fuck's sake. She was not supposed to reciprocate. She had made it clear on several occasions that she didn't.

John dug his fingers into the muscles at his back. He ached all over.

He turned up the temperature of the water a little, hoping it will help ease some of the tension.

From the moment she had arrived on Atlantis, John could tell she was trouble. She was too much his type - smart, attractive, deceivingly innocent, and brave in a way that verged on stupid - for him to not fall for her. Maybe ‘falling’ was a bit much - it had been mostly attraction, at first. But the potential had been alluring.

He should have stuck to his own rules. He should have kept his distance from her. Assign her to a different team. Flirting with her was fun, though, and by the time she was allowed to go on off-world missions, she had proven safely uninterested in him, so he never gave it another thought.

But things had progressed in surprising ways in the months since.

He had managed to keep perfectly professional ties with all his teammates. Despite the running jokes about his love life, his actual encounters had been much fewer than even the most conservative guess going around. And none had been with people he worked with.

His head was beginning to throb. He wasn’t even able to take a relaxing shower without overthinking these days.

But she _had_ kissed him and called him her love. That hadn’t been his imagination. His imagination was usually focused on other scenarios. Kissing was barely a detail in those.

It was the kind of thing that would have earned him a couple of slaps if it got out.

The way she was calling his name in his head… was not something he should be thinking about in the shower… alone… after weeks of isolation and inactivity.

Hell, it had been months since he had last been with someone. And this wasn’t even his own personal shower - he was still in the Infirmary and privacy wasn’t something he could count on over here.

On the other hand, the thought that they were alone in the Infirmary wasn’t helping him keep things professional either. His very bored, very frustrated brain was running every possible scenario in the background and his body was starting to react.

He wasn’t a horny teenager, damnit! But there were things one couldn’t ignore for ever and they tended to come up at the worst possible times.

o0o0o

How long could it take him to shower?

Catherine was pacing the Infirmary and checking her watch every 36 seconds. She wasn’t sure how she had ended up with that particular tick, but it was obviously a thing after the seventh or eighth time she did it.

She could hear the water still running.

She had spent the first few minutes stomping down on each stupid path her brain was unwittingly trying to go down: imagining water running down John’s skin, or the way his fingers brushed over his chest, or what it would be like to have them brush over hers. It had taken _a lot_ of self control not to linger on those fantasies, or join him in the shower. She would have made a great fool of herself then.

But slowly, her fantasies were replaced with worry at each passing minute.

She was aware he had been stuck in bed for two weeks and a shower had been the first thing he had asked for once she allowed him to even get up. But he wasn’t entirely ok yet and it was getting close to an hour since he went in there.

If something happened to him, she would never be able to forgive herself.

He hadn’t begged for death in days, but he hadn’t been very communicative, either. It was starting to feel like an increasingly bad idea to leave him on his own. Even if he hadn’t deliberately caused himself harm, he might still have gotten dizzy under the hot water.

She needed to send someone to check on him, but there was no one but the two of them at that hour in the Infirmary.

Because of course she had to wait until night time to let him have a shower. (Truth be told, she had mostly lost track of time over the past two weeks, but that still wasn’t an excuse) She could kick herself.

She had to go in herself. She was a professional and John was her responsibility while he was under her care, afterall. She could handle him. Especially if he was ill. She needed to make sure. 

Heart thundering, she stopped at the door. She couldn’t barge in.

“John?” she called out, a little faintly even to her own ears.

The sound of running water probably drowned her out.

She cleared her throat and tried again, louder.

“Are you okay?”

The water was still running.

She knocked and called out again, but his silence was getting more worrying.

He couldn’t be doing it on purpose!

“John, I’m coming in!” she warned, but still no answer.

She took one long, steadying breath and opened the door. What the hell, it wasn’t like she had never seen him naked and his condition was still precarious. It was her duty to check.

John seemed fine.

He was upright.

He didn’t seem to be in any pain.

His hair was plastered to his head under the spray.

He didn’t seem to have noticed her come in at all.

She could probably leave without him ever realizing she had intruded. It was obvious he didn’t need medical assistance.

And yet…

While it wasn’t the first time she had seen him naked, she found herself mesmerized at the sighe before her. Her eyes lingered on his form, slowly gliding down from his shoulders to his slender hips and lingering on his very firm…

Catherine gulped. It was time to get out before her imagination went wild. She was carefully preparing her retreat when she realized the water had stopped.

Of all the things it could do, her brain decided to take a break.

She froze in place.

John’s back was no longer facing her. Instead, the man was turning around, probably reaching for a towel.

As their eyes met, his widened in surprise.

Catherine’s cheeks started to burn and she wondered just what shade of red they were turning under his stare. 

As if that wasn’t bad enough, her eyes left his and moved down his body on their own accord, taking it all in, like someone who was starving and had just been offered bread.

Even after two weeks in bed, he still looked more fit than he had any right to be. He was all hard muscles and defined angles, just as she remembered him from the infamous body-switch incident.

Her eyes continued to move down his body, and she just _had_ to wonder what he had been thinking about before she walked in. Something had obviously stirred his interest while in there. _Big_ time.

She groaned inwardly at her own pun, her mouth going dry as her eyes moved up to meet his. The eye contact felt sharp and electrifying, like it connected them on a deeper, intimate level, all pretense forgotten.

She should’ve been blind to miss the feverish glitter of hunger in his eyes. 

Anticipation flared up her spine, heat pooling low in her belly. No matter what her mind told her - that he was still her patient, still highly unstable and potentially dangerous. If he so much as touched her, she wouldn’t care. She wanted him so much she felt hollow on the inside. Wanted to kiss him, touch him, feel his-

She had to get out of there. _Now_.

“I need some air,” she blurted out, before turning around and slamming into the door she forgot to open.

o0o0o

Thirty minutes later, John finally came out.

Catherine was very invested in the microscope she was looking through.

She felt him approach and tensed up. She pretended he wasn’t there. Maybe if she ignored him, he would just go to bed.

He walked over, leaning over her shoulder.

“You know,” he drawled in her ear, his breath hot against her skin.

She tensed tighter, but still didn’t move.

“These things work better with a sample in them.”

He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, barely touching her chin with his fingers, and walked away.

“Good night, Doc,” he said cheerily.

She could tell without looking that he was getting into bed.

_Damn the arrogant bastard!_

Knees shaking, she slumped into her chair.

She had been staring at nothing for the last few minutes and didn’t even realize the sample wasn’t there until he pointed it out.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates will continue to be slow. 
> 
> Warnings for John acting while under the influence of the Wraith enzyme. Big emphasis on that dubious consent tag. 
> 
> Huge thanks to our friend who helped us write much of this chapter, making John's altered state of mind stand out stylistically, as well.

Morning found Catherine sporting a horrible headache. ‘Awake’ was a relative term – she would have had to sleep first, but sleep eluded her. It might have something to do with the shower incident. Her mind was stubbornly going back again and again to the way he had looked at her. And to what might have happened had she stayed.

But he was still high on Wraith enzyme. She _had_ checked that once her head was clear enough to put a sample under the microscope. Sure, it wasn’t as prevalent in his blood stream, but it was still enough to influence his behavior. To what extent, it was anyone’s guess. 

Why was she even thinking about that? He was still a patient. Entirely off-limits. Period.

Furious at herself, she buttoned up her lab coat and ran her hand through her hair.

There! She could be professional!

She went into the Infirmary. People had started to gather there, thankfully.

A few nurses, Stephanie among them, had come to help register the results of her tests so far and do the data entry part of research.

Unsurprisingly, John was animatedly chatting with one of them, making a nuisance of himself. The woman looked charmed and kept pushing a lock of hair behind her ear. If she had pulled it back according to regulations, Catherine thought, she wouldn’t be dealing with that annoyance now.

“I see you’re entertained, Colonel,” Catherine said, the chill in her voice making the nurse shiver. She probably deserved it. This wasn’t the time or place for flirting.

Stephanie was watching them carefully, despite the stack of papers in front of her not getting any smaller. She was probably taking mental notes of this conversation. Well, at least they will make for an interesting update.

“Not as well as last night,” he answered, turning his smile at her in full blast.

Catherine gulped.

Stephanie smirked.

“Anything interesting happened last night?” the nurse asked with a shit-eating grin.

“He was finally allowed to take a shower,” Catherine informed her. “I can imagine it was highly entertaining.”

Stephanie pointedly took a page from the stack and ostensibly went through the data, before saying, “Oh, I bet it was very relaxing.”

The woman had no shame!

“It was hard, after so many weeks stuck in bed,” John said, his eyes never leaving hers.

Of course he had to say that.

Catherine realized all eyes were now on her – John’s in particular were making heat rise to her cheeks, but Stephanie’s were an itch on the side of her that she couldn’t scratch.

“Oh, I’m sure you handled it well,” she said, smiling sweetly. “Did anyone take a blood sample from you yet?”

“Aw, you won’t even ask how I’m feeling this morning?”

His pout was so heavily put on, he looked like something out of one of the more ridiculous fics she _knew_ Stephanie was already plotting.

“I take that as a no. Sleeve up, please!”

Stephanie yelped as the other nurse passed by her, out of Catherine’s way.

o0o0o

John hadn’t slept much the night before. He had a lot of things to think about, like what the hell the Wraith had done to him, the enzyme still coursing through his blood, how his team was dealing with his absence – important questions. Instead, his mind kept coming back to the question that nagged at him like a bored toddler: why had Catherine gone after him in the showers, if she didn’t plan to join him?

He just couldn’t understand the damn woman.

One moment she was friendly, the next she was giving him the silent treatment; one moment she was flirting, the next, she gave him the cold shoulder; one moment she’s kissing him, the next she’s shooting him; one moment she goes into the shower after him, the next… she’s staring into an empty microscope, doing her best to ignore him. And now she was acting like nothing happened and they were back to how things were before. 

Damn _before_ ! He was sick of _before_!

Maybe he would have kept a professional distance and gone back to how things had been before, if he hadn’t seen the way she looked at him in the shower… if she hadn’t gone in after him, to begin with!

Damn the woman, she was nothing but mixed signals!

He wasn’t sure what she wanted even with her sitting next to him, taking his blood.

Judging by her eyes, she hadn’t slept much, either. The thought gave him a certain satisfaction.

And he was tempted to label her reaction to finding him talking with one of her nurses as jealousy, even if the extent of his conversation with Nora was how the cafeteria menu differed from the Infirmary one that morning.

He watched her as she pulled the needle out of his arm, her focus on the action at hand. Maybe even suspiciously focused on the mechanics of it.

You’d have to be blind to miss her interest.

Almost without thinking, he touched her hair, reflexively tracing the ghost of a stray lock.

She startled and looked at him, blue eyes fully focused on him, making John wish they were alone.

“I hear you’re up and about,” Rodney said cheerily, walking in with his trademark lack of tact. He placed a tray of food on John’s lap, oblivious to the tension in the room and smiling broadly.

“I thought we might swap,” Rodney said, picking up a jelly cup.

o0o0o

“If you want to spend two weeks in a hospital bed, hallucinating from Wraith enzyme, be my guest,” John said.

Rodney shrugged. “Not that. I meant your food. I brought you today’s special in exchange for your hospital food. Hi, Catherine!” he said, already digging into the jelly cup.

Seriously, why would anyone think he’d like to spend two weeks in bed? Not that he’d mind, if the Wraith stuff wasn’t on the table.

“You do know we have the same menu, right? It’s just blander,” John explained, though he did pick up the fork and start poking at his meal.

“You have these cute jelly cups. That’s good enough for now.”

Rodney was already done with the cup and looking around for another. His blood pressure was very low that morning. He probably needed another coffee. He’d only had three that morning.

“I’ll let you guys enjoy your food,” Catherine said, smiling at him.

It struck him that he hadn’t seen her in almost two weeks. Not outside the Infirmary or trying to grab lunch as quickly as possible, before returning to the infirmary.

“So… maybe we can grab some, too,” Rodney babbled, remembering they should probably do something together now that she wasn’t stuck in the Infirmary all day. “Food, I mean. Like dinner.”

“Of course,” she said. “Is tonight okay?”

She looked almost relieved and Rodney realized the two weeks cooped up here with John and the nurses were probably getting to her. She looked exhausted and he felt a bit guilty for not asking her out sooner. It was the kind of social expectation that kept slipping his mind and made people think he didn’t care, when he was just busy with every other emergency popping up.

They could both use a break.

“Yeah, tonight would be great.”

John was stabbing at his food with a little too much gusto. That was another thing he should have done sooner. He was probably sick of the usual bland hospital stuff.

“I’ll sneak you some salt packets next time,” Rodney tried to assure him.

John swallowed his mouthful and fixed Rodney with a cold stare. “Don’t worry, there’s plenty of salt.”

o0o0o

The newest batch of tests was running. The enzyme was still present in his system, but his metabolism was slowly eliminating it. She would blame his latest behavior on it, but she was suspecting it was just what Rodney called his ‘captain Kirk routine’.

Rodney’s invitation had come at the perfect moment, just like his arrival. He stopped her from making a complete fool of herself, though she was sure the nurses hadn’t missed anything. Stephanie especially. The woman had eyes everywhere.

She wasn’t 100% sure, but she suspected what her fanfic pen name was. She had read every single one of her fics and knew how the woman’s head worked. She also knew how to write – her mind was dirty and her pen was skilled. She was the only one who could keep her up reading until 3 am about Rodney and Zelenka! Which weren’t even her favorite. She just couldn’t stand reading about John with anyone else, Teyla in particular. Not that Larrin, Chaya, Mara, Elizabeth, Teer or any of the others were much better. Thankfully, all the Wraith Queen fics had been promptly deleted. They stopped being fun speculation and no one seemed to miss them.

She needed to get her mind off… everything.

She felt more than a bit guilty towards Rodney, but she hadn’t been ignoring him on purpose. They had both been busy. There was no point to take him away from his work so she could panic at him over John’s medical developments.

She liked Rodney. She really did. He was perfectly her type: smart, independent, not clingy, loyal, he gave her plenty of space and she never felt in any kind of danger around him. He didn’t even try to hit on her unless she flirted first. She knew what to expect from him, for a change. No strands of hair being tucked behind her ear when she wasn’t paying attention, no whispers in her ear, no flirting with random women, and definitely no embarrassing shower incidents.

She _liked_ him.

And that was the problem, wasn’t it? You weren’t supposed to just ‘like’ the person you’re dating, not in the long run. And you definitely couldn’t keep dating someone you just liked, if you were constantly thinking of somebody else. And yet, here she was.

She glanced across the room, over her shoulder. John was looking her way with an unreadable, tense expression, while Rodney, completely oblivious, was talking and eating out of a second jelly cup, gesturing animatedly.

What did John have to be tense about? She was the one questioning the very basis of her relationship and sanity here!

She broke eye contact and felt the intensity of his stare leave her, as well.

o0o0o

This was getting ridiculous. One moment she’s looking at him like she wants something, the next, she’s going out with Rodney.

She couldn’t be that oblivious. She was playing with him. And by the looks of things, she was playing with Rodney, too. He’d never thought her capable of that much cruelty.

Rodney was clearly unaware of her intentions, yet he managed to get even worse under John’s skin. His cheery babble, usually a tolerable background noise, was driving him up the walls.

“And then Zelenka suggested we switch the crystals around, which is completely ridiculous, since those are identical and switching them around wouldn’t make a difference. But you know how stubborn he can be,” Rodney rattled on about something John had long lost track of. “But he even got Elizabeth to agree and we spent a whole day trying to pull the thing apart. A whole day, just to get to the damn crystals!”

The indignation in Rodney’s voice was only matched by his agitation. He had been gesticulating so widely, he hadn’t had a chance to eat anything in at least three sentences.

“So did it blow up?” John asked, feeling like he should make a contribution to this dialogue.

Rodney looked crestfallen. “No, it worked. Now I’ll never hear the end of it.”

John put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “What’s this world coming to? We can’t rely on anything going as it should anymore.”

He wasn’t sure if he was referring to their conversation or his own circumstances, but he felt it was the appropriate thing to say, either way.

o0o0o

Stephany was anxiously waiting for a sign that Zelenka and Lorne’s team had returned, but her com remained silent. She hadn’t had any news of the expedition in 15 hours and they were supposed to have come back or at least contact Atlantis in over six hours. 

Something had gone wrong, she knew it. 

She started pacing through the lab and wished she could at least be pacing the Gate room, at least. And she could have been there, except _someone_ had to go on a date. It wasn’t even like it was going to go anywhere. Catherine was about as interested in dating Rodney as she was in dating Catherine, which was slight curiosity at most, because the doctor was definitely not her type. She didn’t judge Rodney, but half the base was rooting for him moving on from this dead-end of a relationship. 

To top things off, she was supposed to babysit a grumpy Col. Sheppard. She could sympathise. She would have probably been feeling the same if Zelenka were on a date with Rodney… actually, she'd have tried to get in on that. 

“Hey, Steph,” Col. Sheppard called, sounding almost like his usual self. 

He gave her a rueful smile. 

“I can see you’re worried about Zelenka. Go see if they have news. I’m fine.” 

Stephanie eyed him suspiciously, not trusting his sudden mood change.

“Really. I’m fine,” he assured her. “You saw the lab results and let’s face it, I’m obviously doing better.” 

He did seem fine. Besides, Catherine was supposed to come back soon. She wasn’t supposed to watch him sleep and there were guards at the door in case something happened. What could be the harm… 

“Are you sure you’re fine on your own? I can call one of the other girls,” she offered.

“No, thanks. I’ll just grab some Zs. You’d think spending two weeks in bed would make that redundant, but neah, still tired as all hell.” He punctuated his statement with a yawn. 

She hesitated a moment. In his condition, he could use all the sleep he could get. But he seemed too eager to get rid of her. 

Considering Catherine was off on a date, maybe he wanted to take care of his own pity party. She could understand that. 

She looked at her watch and realized another half hour had passed with no news. 

“Do you need anything before I go?” she insisted.

He shook his head and shooed her away with a wave of his hand. 

“I’ll be fine.”

“Thanks, Colonel. I owe you one.” 

She hurried out of the Infirmary and her pace quickened into a run on the way to the Gate room. 

The vague sensation she forgot something nagged at the back of her head. 

o0o0o

The date with Rodney could have gone worse. At least they didn’t end up playing Scrabble. She was finally getting the hang of Catan. Next time, she was definitely going to kick his ass at that game. 

On the other hand, she still hadn’t had the heart to tell him their relationship was going nowhere. 

He probably knew that already. He had never pushed any boundaries. The kissing was nice, but they were too good friends to ruin that by moving further. 

What were the chances that when she finally found a guy she was comfortable with, he wasn’t the one she was actually attracted to? 

Well, she was heading that way. John was probably asleep by now, but she still needed to check on the latest test results and make sure he was on the right track. 

On that note, she entered the Infirmary. The lights were dimmed and Stephanie wasn’t there, but that was to be expected, since John was already asleep. 

She checked his chart and noticed Stephanie didn’t mark the last dose of sedatives. 

He was lying on his side, with his back turned to her, so she leaned over him to check. Just in case. 

He was sound asleep. 

She could go back to work. After all, she had spent all her evening with Rodney and now she was behind on the newest batch of samples from the Belkans that needed to be tested. 

She settled in for a long night of staring through a microscope. 

o0o0o

Unfortunately, being sound asleep wasn’t a priority for John just like being truthful to Rodney wasn’t a priority to Catherine. Which was an understatement, since his need to... whatever was growing inside him at the moment, was reaching a boiling point.

Okay, maybe his initial idea wasn’t getting better by the minute. Maybe his idea got the best of his better judgement because, let’s face it, John had a long history of acting before thinking when it came to blondes and hormones, but mostly to blondes. Okay, mostly to hormones, but that was beside the point.

The point was he was losing his damn minds while sitting on a damn bed, pretending to be asleep. Which might earn him the following question: why was he pretending to be asleep?

Well, the fact that he was feeling and acting better was just that, an act. While trying to get inside his own head and man up about the situation, John forgot the benefits of modern medicine. 

“Fuck…” he whispered to himself, making sure to muffle the sound of his fucking logical idea to voice out his current state of mind and… body. It was oh so involuntary, maybe because he was slipping in and out of… whatever word Catherine would use to medically describe a human losing ground to some Wraith enzyme.

Yeah, that was it! 

It was the enzyme messing with his head and not his damn rage at the fact that Rodney had more balls to ask Catherine out on a date, than he ever had. 

He was mad about the whole situation, frustrated to a point that he was imagining what she would taste like while eating a cup of jelly. He was feeling his entire body vibrating to every touch Catherine was giving him. Sure, he was sounding and almost acting like a beggar, but this was fucking ridiculous. Going on, and on, and on, and…

So why was John pretending to be asleep? Because he was such an idiot that he thought, for a second, that if Stephanie would forget about his sedatif, he would be awake to have some fun at Catherine’s expense. Because he was mad about her dating Rodney. Because he was mad at her not being honest about her feelings. Because he was mad at himself not being in control of the fucking situation. There, screw therapy! He was getting places now, just not at the moment. 

At the moment he was feeling a little… off. Not just a little, a lot! 

Something was definitely wrong with his inner demon… wraith. But more importantly, John actually liked what he was hearing and feeling. And smelling, because he was sensing perfume in the room and, by God, Catherine only used perfume on certain occasions, and they never included him. Not ever.

Okay, maybe he needed to calm down. It wasn’t Rodney’s fault. Maybe it was, a little… a lot. But it didn’t matter anymore, because Rodney was his friend and her friendzone-friend. And Catherine was his…

Feeling like a wire just snapped in him, John glanced over to where Catherine was sitting to watch her handle her stuff and manhandle her bunned up hair, which clearly was starting to mess with her cool. Every now and again a strand a hair would fall on her nape and go down her backside and her hand would yank that messy strand like it fucked with her zen. 

That was an idea…

What was that Ronon always said about aggressive situations? Let the devil run wild…. or some bull like that. John always zoned out when he tried to explain the meaning of life and love, but never sex, mostly because it would have been too damn awkward. But he listened enough to know that sometimes you needed to shock in order to make someone pay attention to you. 

With a foot almost touching the ground, John froze.

Catherine was reaching for something behind her. She stopped midway, as if changing her mind. Thankfully, because his back was killing him in this awkward position, hence the second foot followed, touching the floor with stealth. 

The minute that happened, his whole sense of direction and balance went to shit. He felt a sudden heat going from his chest to his head and he could swear he saw red. Literally. 

Last thing his common sense told him was that she smelled too damn good. 

It was then when he felt it. The predator in him, who wanted something other than killing. And for the first time since this damn ordeal had started, John actually liked the feeling. 

One step after another, getting closer and closer, he was getting his senses and his good mood back. 

And he was in the mood for Catherine. 

As he got so close he could feel her body’s heat, Catherine remained oblivious to him to the point that she reached again for whatever she wanted from the shelf behind her, almost touching him. Blindly, she groped every item, not finding what she needed.

Bending just a little to level himself to her sitting height, John watched as her hand went farther to her right towards him. And, as her elbow connected with his side, John whispered… “How was Rodney?”

o0o0o

Catherine jumped. 

The voice was too close in the quiet Infirmary for her to process what was happening. Adrenaline-filled blood was pumping rapidly through her veins and she didn’t even realize when she turned to face him. 

He looked different. 

Even in the dim light, he looked wild, his eyes fixed on hers with an intensity that set off all her alarms. The hairs at the back of her neck stood up, her flight-or-fight instincts kicking in. 

And yet, a part of her was quivering with anticipation. 

She took a step back and immediately bumped into the edge of her desk. There was nowhere for her to go that way and she didn’t dare push past him. 

There was a question. What was the question?

“Rodney?” she asked stupidly. 

John flashed her a smile that showed too much tooth to be anything other than aggressive. 

She gripped the edge of the desk for support.

“He’s… fine.”

“I was asking how he _was_ , not how he _is_ ,” he hissed. 

A shiver ran down her spine. 

She couldn’t look away. 

Frantically, she tried to think back on her evening with Rodney for anything relevant to this surreal scene. Why would John want to know how her game of Catan had gone? Why did he have to employ such an approach to ask her? 

“Smug, as always,” she said, “He finished first, again.” 

His lips twitched with cruel amusement and he reached out to her. 

Startled, she bumped into the desk again and she reached back to steady herself. She knocked something over and her hand landed awkwardly on the surface. The impact hurt, but there was another layer of pain to it. Something sharper. 

“Fuck!” 

She pulled back her hand and stared at it in disbelief. There was blood. Not a lot of it, but her index finger was bleeding enough to break through her panic. 

o0o0o

“Again?” John asked, his gaze shifting from her eyes to her wound, an idea blooming in his mind. 

He could tell, even in his haze, that she was scared of him, yet he couldn’t stop the weird satisfaction that kept creeping its way into his loins. And in that short moment of panic, instead of shoving him away, Catherine gave him the most vivid hallucination in which her legs were wrapped around his waist, grinding and pushing into his bulge, while he was busy sucking the blood from her wounded finger. 

His normal self would have backed away immediately, but he wasn’t exactly himself and he could blame someone else for this later. At least that’s what his instinct was telling him now. And the way Catherine was looking and responding to him gave John a high that he could only describe as euphoric and dangerous.

“To be smug about finishing first isn’t really something to be proud of. Although, I must admit, I’d do that too if you’d look at me like this …” he whispered with a wicked smile while he pushed himself even more into her private space, taking advantage of her confusion to lift her off her feet and on her desk. 

The confusion on her face turned bright red, more so because he shoved her thighs apart to push his pelvis, almost shamelessly, between her legs.

“John?” she almost whimpered his name, looking both dazed and outraged, her eyes shifting from his eyes to her bloody hand, to him being too intimately close to her, not knowing, or not wanting to react to the sudden change of pace. 

He could almost see it in her eyes, trying to focus and think, but every time John would casually push into her while looking around for something to bandage her wound, her pupils would dilate and her mouth would open ever so slightly. John was oh so very sure that she didn’t notice her teeth biting her lower lip, or her tongue going over both her lips like she was dehydrated and looking for something to… drink.

And, more importantly, John was even more certain that his dearest little Catherine wasn’t aware of the fact that her legs were almost curled around his thighs, making her dress go high on her legs, exposing her skin more and more, to the point that he could smell her damp heat. 

It was killing him not to touch her panties, but then again… didn’t she just insinuate that she had sex with another man?

Rodney, of all people. 

“Yes?” Because it’s always polite to respond to someone asking for you in such an inviting way. 

It’s also polite to help someone in need. And Catherine was indeed… in so much need that his temper rejoiced at the situation, wanting to punish her for sleeping with another.

“Is there something that you need to tell me?” John asked as he took her bloody hand to examine the damage, bending his head to her wrist to lick away a few drops of blood that were dripping from her wound. His eyes never left hers and his licking didn’t stop until his mouth seized her finger, sucking gently.

Waiting for her head to process what was happening, he could almost say he was waiting for it.

o0o0o

This was not the time to let her body run the show. But her brain was too busy overloading with new stimuli - his tongue on her skin, the gentle sensation of sucking on her flesh, his unnerving closeness, the heat of his body, the pressure of the hard desk behind her, the growing menace of his presence… fear and arousal were mixing together into new and not entirely welcomed realizations. 

A spark of reason shone through the growing haze in her mind. 

This was wrong. 

His tongue gathered up the last drop of blood and she couldn’t stop thinking how unsanitary that was. There were a dozen other reasons why this was wrong, but this was the one her rational brain chose to fix on. 

The rest of her was finding it increasingly hot

This was so not the time to discover a new kink! 

The very recent image of his naked body that her memory generously provided wasn’t helping either. 

Well, it _was_ helping, only not with staying sane and in charge of the situation. That part was long past. 

She shivered as he drew his mouth away, regretting the loss and already thinking of other places she would like to feel his tongue. 

“Maybe…” she whispered, unsure what it was exactly that she wanted to tell him. 

She couldn’t really tell him to stop, but she couldn’t let him continue, either. This was so far out of her depth. 

She needed to get out of there before things really got out of control. 

But he was pinning her in place with his gaze and she wasn’t sure she wanted to break away from that. 

Instead of doing the wise thing, she bypassed her brain completely. She placed her hand on his cheek and returned his stare. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be in bed?” she asked softly. 

o0o0o

She was supposed to be scared of him. 

He needed that satisfaction. 

He also needed that boundary. He needed the reminder of his resolve to keep her safe, even from the brutality that was creeping in. 

From the moment she walked in the Infirmary, the predator in him wanted to kill her, to eat her up, or fuck her senseless. All these impulses mixed to give him one hell of a rush in which nothing made sense to him but the feel of her under his skin. 

His intoxicated mind went from imagining her taste while eating jelly, to actually licking her blood from her skin.

That almost made his eye roll in the back of his head.

He had never experienced something like this before and it fucking scared him, but he couldn’t stop. It was like looking from afar at a man that was about to do something regretful. In an inner corner of his mind, John asked himself how far would Catherine’s will bend to his before running away.

And whether she’d forgive him if he pushed far enough to satisfy his urges. 

Well, his questions went to shit when she asked hers. 

What was left of his human restraint took a blow, not sure how to react after she showed him a kindness that skirted close to interest. Or maybe her arousal and flushed cheeks were just messing with him. Either way, instead of pushing him away, she stood her ground and challenged the predator in him to bend her further.

Bad fucking idea! 

“Weren’t you supposed to run?” he asked in a hoarse voice before grabbing her neck to capture her lips.

There it was.

His last drop of sanity before everything went to shit. Because Atlantis could come under siege and he wouldn’t care. John would still push Catherine further back on the desk, forcing her thighs to grip him so hard that his cock would create a maddening friction straight to her core, through her now wet panties. And it was blissful and painful, the way he was thrusting into her, the same way his tongue was roughly seeking out hers in an almost brutal rhythm. Rough and slow, pushing and grinding into an orgasm he was seeking with a vengeance. He was biting and sucking her lips the same way she taunted him earlier.

Was she scared of him now?

Not really, or not enough, because her tongue was meeting his head-on. Playing with a fire that only sex would put out. Rough, sweaty, loud enough for anybody close enough to hear. Enzyme or not, what they were doing could end careers and still he couldn't focus back into his own mind to stop his hands from groping both her breasts through her dress, massaging and pinching her nipples so hard, he could feel it through his own erection.

Stopping their kiss, John bent his head just enough to take one of her nipples between his lips, sucking through the fabric with a pained expression on his face.

He needed to be inside of her, now. Needed to come and feel her come around him.

It hurt. It hurt so bad. 

Going back to her face, nose to nose, almost touching her lips, John whispered in a rough and angry voice.

“Run!”

o0o0o

Run? How could she run from him?

But he was high on Wraith enzyme. In fact, he was so high he probably didn’t care if it was her or Dr. Biro. Or Stephanie. Considering the state he was in, there was a chance he would have jumped on any breathing female in sight. And if that thought didn’t sober her up, nothing else would. 

Worst of all, he was highly unstable, and still her patient. She would have fired anyone in the blink of an eye for doing far less.

Still, she loved him and she couldn’t deny it anymore. She loved him more than she'd ever loved Daniel, more than she thought humanly possible, and she had almost lost him. For weeks she had watched him writhing in pain, all too aware that his heart could give out under the strain. 

If she ran, the guards would be there in a second. They would restrain him, tie him to a bed and sedate him like he was some kind of dangerous animal. Catherine knew better than anyone how dangerous he still was - and how vulnerable, behind all that anger. She would never allow anyone to hurt him again. She knew it for a fact, just like she knew she was going to kill anyone stupid enough to try. Insectoid Queens included.

Besides, she had remained by his side when he was at his worst and she had never been afraid.

She wasn’t afraid of him now. 

Catherine was more afraid of herself. Her thoughts, her reactions, the way her body responded to his every touch, they were all new to her and far more frightening than he was.

For a long, silent moment she just stared at him. There was nothing soft or gentle in his eyes. They promised her more pain and more pleasure than she could take, and she craved for them both. Her body was practically begging for him to continue, arching and trying to get more contact, more friction, more... of him.

He pushed into her again and she moved her hips forward instinctively.

She wanted his mouth back on her nipples, his hands tearing the goddamn dress and touching her skin. Her treacherous mind pictured him naked between her legs, thrusting into her just like he was doing now, and heat coiled in the pit of her stomach. She needed to take his clothes off and, oh God, how it would feel to have him inside her and his lips on her skin, his...

She swallowed. 

This was madness. It wasn’t even about him wanting her - oh, no! It was about him being high and horny. 

She just happened to be around.

She groped behind her, looking for something. Something that had to be there, if she was right in her assessment and Stephanie had forgotten about it. 

As she did so, her eyes never left his. She couldn't have enough of the lust and anger burning in there.

Her fingers touched a familiar object and closed around it. She could hear her heart pounding in her temples and her mouth suddenly went dry. 

She should feel relieved, she realized, but she was far from it. In fact, she felt like crying.

It was the right thing to do. There was no other way, not if she wanted to still be able to look at herself in the mirror.

She licked her lips, trying to bring back some moisture to her mouth and some sense to her dazed brain.

“I’m not running anywhere,” she assured him in a raw, strained voice. “Take me to bed. It’s full of shards here, and God knows what else,” she continued, trying to sound as reasonable and enticing as possible.

Just to add more convincing power to her words, she let her other hand slip under his t-shirt and hesitantly touch his bare skin.

o0o0o

There was an inner-inner voice that was yelling ' _Are you shitting me_?' somewhere inside John’s infested mind. It was so loud that he almost tripped on his own legs, which would have been weird considering he wasn’t even moving. It was a short lived surprise before his anger kicked in, making him grind his teeth. 

Everytime - and he did mean _every damn time_ \- he had crossed the professional line with her, Catherine’s response had been short-tempered and sometimes violent. She had her childish moments, her awkward moments, and not to mention her stupid moments, the Rodney situation being one of them, but she had never been this bold. This eager. And out of all the instances in which this should have happened, she chose to let him have his way with her when he wasn’t quite himself. What a way to discover someone’s kink without discussing a safe word first! Although he did say ‘run’.

Trying to shake out his inner demon for a moment, literally, John grabbed her by her ass and yanked her towards him to carry her to a bed, any bed. 

His mind was too clouded to tell her that this was a bad idea or that she wasn't safe with him. This wasn’t him and for a moment he resented her for not running when she still could. And he resented himself for pushing further.

But she felt so right, so soft, and smelled so damn good. Trying to walk with her in his arms, made it hard to focus. All he could see were her flushed face and her red lips which he was looking at with raw hunger.

Why should he try to stop himself?

She should know better! Instead, she was egging him on, her hand going from his pecs to his fly, to his arms, caressing and accidently scratching or pinching, which he didn’t mind. At this point, the most he could do was pray to God that an orgasm could subdue his predatory urges. And they both needed one, or two.

John stopped in front of a bed with her in his arms, not wanting to unwrap her legs from his waist, or remove his hands from her ass. He couldn’t stop himself from rubbing his face to her cleavage, licking and kissing his way from one nipple to another. Going higher up to her neck, and leaving wet traces. 

She was so beautiful and unmarked it irked him to the bone. She dared touch another man, one who couldn’t even satisfy her. It made him want to mark her for everyone to know and see she was his. So he bit her as gently as his anger let him, then he sucked on her skin, wanting blood. One spot after another, licking them slowly to heighten his own arousal. She looked so lovely, so perfect, so appetizing.

“What are you doing to me?” he managed to ask a second before dropping her on the bed with him on top, eyeing her mouth with the intent of kissing her until she came from his tongue in her mouth alone. Tongue that licked its way from her chin to her lower lip, hovering above her until her hands wound into his hair almost painfully, pulling him into a hungry kiss that sent shivers throughout his body, stopping to his loins. 

He felt on fire.

As her hand was sliding under his t-shirt, her nails scratching his back, his hands were lifting her dress up to her waist. He wanted to remove her panties, but that was easier said than done, since Catherine was bent on making him go completely out of his damn minds, pushing herself into him at the same time her sharp tongue was licking its way into his mouth. Who was penetrating who here?

“Why don’t you tell _me?_ ” she replied between kisses with the sweetest smile he has ever seen on her face.

As her legs wrapped around his back, a blissful shudder took his thoughts of removing her panties away, because he was about to spill in his pants. 

To hell with it, he needed friction fast. 

He kissed her lips, sucking them between small laps of his tongue, while his hands were keeping her in place for his thrusts, shoving her dress higher and higher every time they were free to wiggle their way further between her legs. He wanted to rip the goddamn dress off of her, and he would have succeeded if not for the sudden wave of dizziness that washed over him, making John stop.

“What is happening?” he asked, looking down at her, wondering why his muscles were beginning to feel numb. 

“Did what I had to,” she muttered, looking away with a note of shame in her voice.

“Which was what, exactly? Not wanting to sleep with me?” John growled, feeling himself going numb. He still had enough awareness to flip over to avoid crushing her with his body. God forbid, he would do that! 

“You _tranqued_ me? What the hell, Catherine,” he asked, feeling less and less in charge of his own body. “You could have run when I told you to. You could have at least told me to stop!

She looked at him, her expression unreadable. “How could I know you would?” she asked, softly.

Her words cut deeper than he thought possible, even more so because he knew she was right. And he hated himself for that. 

“What do you take me for?” he muttered, more angry at himself than her.

“I had no choice, okay? John, this would have been a mistake..." she answered in a soft voice, glancing towards the empty syringe in her hand.

Following her gaze, John’s temper flared. He might as well drool like an idiot while she was apologizing for the BIG mistake that nearly happened.

“You clearly dodged that bullet with me, Kitty-Kat. What happened? Between Rodney and me, you figured he’s relationship material and I’m an easy fuck? Or maybe it would have been too much for you to screw two guys on the same night? No, wait. It’s not even that, since you didn’t want to _taint_ yourself with me,” he said, his voice cold and angry. Feeling like an asshole for talking to her like that, but wanting to make her hurt.

"Oh, is that so? That's all you have to say after I almost...” she trailed off, not quite saying the words, but looking at him like she wanted to raise hell and slap the living shit out of him.

“Almost had sex in the middle of the Infirmary?” he offered.

“Almost had sex with you high on wraith enzyme! Probably _very_ high, if you’re talking like this! You’re still my patient, John! This is wrong on so many levels I’d need an escalator to get through them!” Catherine snapped, looking about as angry as he felt.

“Oh! I see, the good and sweet doctor thinking about my well being,” he grunted, feeling like he couldn’t focus anymore. She was starting to fade away from his vision, like he was slipping into a dark place.

“Damn right I am! I didn’t even _have_ sex with Rodney! Not that I owe you an explanation! You were so high, you would have done it with any female in sight!” 

She was half-hiding her face, but John could hear the tears in her voice. Her hands were flying all over the place and she was talking fast and high pitched. He had every right to hurt her back, so why was she this upset? 

Wait, what did she just say?

“Catherine…” he whispered, feeling himself sinking into a deep sleep. “I may be high, but I did it _because_ it was you,” he continued, ending with a thud when his head hit the pillow - and a bit of the metal headboard - as he fell fast asleep.


End file.
